Some things on my mind lately—
what i’m enjoying most about the olympics this year is reminding people about that time bob costas was on air, covering the olympics, while he had pink eye — this oral history from vulture in which costas says, “I don’t deserve a purple heart, it wasn’t heroic, but it was professional. You know? I was just trying to be a professional,” is amazing
during a men’s gymnastics final one of the commentators said, “he’s nearly 31, how can he keep doing this,” about oleg from ukraine — it made me feel simultaneously like i can do anything as a 31 year old and also that maybe i should just shrivel up and pack it all in
i caught the end of barbra streisand’s the mirror has two faces on a random channel my antenna now picks up and the smile on my face was that of an insane person’s — the end credits of this very fun, good time film rival that of michael clayton
one of the great things about seinfeld is that there are so many bits about going to the movies, as half my social life involves going to the movies, this really speaks to me
josh hartnett, as seen in m. night shyamalan’s trap, is a true thespian, heart throb and movie star!!! if you enjoy camp and close ups and having a good time at the movies, please go see this – no one is doing it like m. night, no one!
What I’m Reading
I have become a person who loves going to the dentist. It makes me feel fresh and productive. I now have a whole ritual around it, which includes taking a half day off work and visiting the Free Little Library near my dentist’s office. Last week, I dropped off a couple romances, a weird little novel that traveled with me from a used bookstore in Philadelphia, and a non-Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling novel that I never read and decided I never will.
I did not take anything from the library. Instead, I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney to re-read in preparation for the release of Intermezzo next month.
Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan - Ali Morris is two years into grieving the loss of her mother when her less than understanding husband asks for a divorce. A mother of three, professional organizer who hasn’t changed out of her sweatpants in years, Ali finds herself ready to step back into the driver’s seat of her life. While daydreaming at the dog park, Ali’s dog pees on the shoe of a handsome stranger and gets her a date. Could a summer romance be just the thing Ali needs to find herself again? (yes, obviously)
I absolutely loved Annabel Monaghan’s first book, Nora Goes Off Script, about a divorced mom who adapts her life for the screen and starts dating the movie star who plays her ex-husband. Her second book, Same Time Next Summer, I liked less because it was a second-chance high school romance, but Summer Romance felt a bit like a return to form.
I love the way this passage felt—
He’s looking directly at me, into my eyes and then at my hair. I am out of my body being looked at like that. I am out of time and in some other, lighter, freer body. I don’t want to move.
And the way Ali talked about her daughter—
She is fearless and sure in a way that makes me wish she was a pill I could swallow.
And the way she feels herself coming back to herself—
I have the sense that I am a limb that went numb, and I am starting to tingle again.
Natural Selection: A Short Story by Elin Hilderbrand - This breezy 50 page short story (an amazon original, cringe, which i got as part of their “first reads” promo where at the beginning of each month, prime members can choose from five or so new books to download for free) about a woman who finds herself alone on what was supposed to be a couples’ cruise to the Galápagos Islands was the exact “I don’t know what to read next” cure I was looking for.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott - I loved this craft book so much. It’s funny and relatable and made me feel so seen. I probably underlined at least one passage in every chapter.
True to the title, a lot of the writing advice feels like great life advice too, like—
You don’t want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can’t fill up when you’re holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water–just as writing is also about dealing with emptiness. The emptiness destroys enough writers without the help of some friend of spouse.
What I’m Writing
My readers be reading—
It takes a lot of will power not to ask where they are in the story, but I know myself well enough to know that it would make me anxious thinking about their reactions to the scenes they have left, so it’s best for me to just remain blissfully ignorant until they’re done!
I am just always going to be talking about Bird by Bird now, I’m sorry, but lately, I’ve been feeling this—
Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.
I wrote out a conversation I needed to have in the form of a scene from a novel in an effort to assuage my anxiety and figure out what I needed to say.
The thing about being a writer is that I’m good at people. Often, I know what they’re going to say before they say it, so when I had the conversation in real life, it played out almost exactly as I had written it, which made me feel both better and worse.
Sometimes it’s nice to be surprised, but I so rarely am.
You know when you’re in your feelings and every dog you pass on the street seems to know it?
I see a lot of the same dogs on my daily walking route. Sometimes they ignore me, and sometimes they try to stop their walker to look up at me with happy eyes that tell me they don’t know me but they love me anyway.
Most mornings, I pass this beautiful chestnut retriever and his old, serious-faced owner. It happens so often that I give them both a little close-lipped smile when I see them, an acknowledgement that I know who they are, that I recognize them and the fact that we share this ritual — the same route taken in opposite directions. The dog is always happy to see me, the old man, not so much.
But the other day, when I was in my feels, my throat feeling tight and clogged, the old man looked at me and gave me a little nod.
I have been smiling at this man for the last two years! And finally! He has returned the gesture! I cannot express how big this triumph is.
Sometimes little things are actually big things.
There’s a great line from Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel that I think about all the time—
I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.
I’ve been journaling and watching my comfort movies and trying to let my brain, at least, be still — which has led to me playing with little poems and gathering ideas for scenes and jotting down what could be a beginning to a new thing.
For those keeping track, this is the second “beginning” I have come up with since taking my hands off Novel 2. I’m wondering if maybe they can be different parts of the same story. I’m wondering how I’ll know when I have my next story.
The idea for Novel 2 came to me very early in the Novel 1 drafting process. I opened a new doc and wrote what I thought the opening chapter would be (i did use its bones as a reference for a scene in the current draft). I made notes and a possible outline, which was different from the outline I made later after I finished Novel 1, which is different from what Novel 2 ended up becoming.
But it was all work I needed to do to find out what the story was, so maybe that’s what I have to do with these two beginnings I have — plop them in a doc and see if I can write them to a place that gets my juices flowing.
For all the advice out there, writing is such a mysterious process.
That’s all from me this week! Stay Tuned.